


The Telegram

by loopyhoopyfrood



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Groundhog Day, Out of Space and Time, major angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-01-06 02:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12202173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loopyhoopyfrood/pseuds/loopyhoopyfrood
Summary: When Jack receives news of a devastating event, time breaks its own rules to offer him the chance to prevent it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Oh man, I still haven't written anything for the July prompt. I guess I'll quickly write a couple of hundred words just so I'm not missing a month.
> 
> Also me, nearly 2000 words later: Damn.
> 
> This is the first half of my extremely late July prompt fic; Out of Space and TIme. Who knows when the second half will appear.  
> Enjoy.

Jack awakens to a telegram.

There’s no signature, no name or initials to indicate its sender, and the message itself gives away nothing of its writer’s intent. The folded piece of paper contains only a time and a place, stamped with the impersonal ink of a generic typewriter. Even so, it can only refer to one thing. Yet, hours later, Jack finds himself no closer to working out what the author intended him to do with the given information.

The rational part of his brain tells him its nothing but polite courtesy, a conveyance of plans from one friend to another. The irrational part, the part that has recently begun to dare to hope, wonders if it could possibly be an invitation. He tells himself it’s unlikely, Phryne Fisher is not a woman who allows her life to be influenced by any man. Yet, as the time on the page approaches, the telegram finds itself buried deep in the pocket of a long, grey coat, as its recipient throws all caution to the wind and dares to act on hope.

 

The second telegram arrives that evening.

Its sender is no mystery, its contents no riddle. The message is clear and to the point, and yet to Jack this is the telegram he finds he cannot wrap his head around. The words as they are make complete sense; informing the D.I. of a crashed airplane and two fatalities, but the longer Jack stares at the inked lettering the more they swirl around his mind in a haze of impossibility. No matter how long he sits there, he cannot reconcile the words in front of him with the image of Phryne, flying away from him into the clear blue sky, so beautifully, gloriously alive.

His sleep that night is tortured by images of the airfield; of a sense of desperation as he chases a balloon across a barren field. No matter how fast he runs and how hard he clutches at the string, he finds he cannot stop the coloured orb from disappearing into the cloudless sky.

 

Jack awakens to a telegram.

It’s waiting for him as he stumbles into the hall, identical to the one that had sent him racing towards the airfield the day before. He opens it without thinking, acting more out of habit than from any particular sense of curiosity, and the first time his eyes scan the short message the words are nothing but black ink on a white page. The second time the words actually register; the lines on the page forming themselves into an all too familiar time and a place. There is no third time, instead the telegram finds itself crumpled into a messy ball and flung across the room as its recipient suppresses the urge to punch something.

His day passes. The cases that pass his desk seem familiar, but Jack can’t bring himself to question it. His fills out paperwork on autopilot, answers questions from his constables without hearing what they ask. He knows that they know something’s wrong, but can’t bring himself to care. All he can think about is the airfield, and the irrational conviction that if he’d convinced her to stay, Phryne Fisher wouldn’t be dead.

 

The second telegram arrives that evening.

One of his constables delivers it, an urgent message from another station, and Jack can’t stop his hand from shaking as he reaches out to take it, assaulted by intense déjà vu as the events of yesterday repeat themselves. He has to remind himself to breath, remind himself that this isn’t the same message, that no matter how bad the news is, it can’t be as bad as that which he’s already received.

It’s the same message. Jack finds himself frozen to his chair, everything else fading into unimportance as the words sink in, informing him of a crashed plane and two fatalities. Just when he thinks he’s forgotten how to breath, the constable’s voice jerks him back to reality, and somehow he manages to sound composed enough that he’s left alone. He isn’t sure how long it takes, but eventually he manages to rationalise the telegram’s delivery. The office must have made a mistake, he tells himself, sending the same message twice with complete ignorance of the pain it would only serve to intensify. He makes a note to complain tomorrow.

 

Jack awakens to a telegram.

The short message seems almost a taunt, the time and place laughing at him from the page. It finds itself crumpled in an angry fist and dropped to the floor as its recipient slams his fists against the wall. She’s gone, and the last thing he needs is this constant reminder of his failure to stop it from happening. For a while he just focuses on breathing, and when he’s calm enough he rings the station and tells them he’s going to be late.

The woman at the telegram office is insistent that the crumpled message in Jack’s hand was sent for the first time this morning. She even provides a description of its sender; expensive clothes and bobbed black hair, and Jack finds himself cursing the universe for whatever cruel trick it’s playing on him. He tells them not to send him anything tomorrow, and spends the rest of the day with his office door locked.

 

The second telegram arrives that evening.

Jack refuses to unlock his door, and so the paper is slid underneath, where it waits patiently for him on his wooden floor. He prepares himself before he opens it, blames the incompetence of the telegram office, but the words still hit him like a strike to the gut. He flings the door open, ignoring the whisperings of his colleagues as he strides from the building. The telegram office is closed by the time he arrives for the second time that day, so instead Jack drowns his anger and sorrows in whiskey whilst the message that continues to devastate his world lies crumpled in his wallet, proof of the office’s inadequacy.

 

Jack awakens to a telegram.

This time he doesn’t even open it, baring even sparing the folded paper a glance as he collects his keys and leaves the house. His constables avoid him all morning, and in return Jack ignores the glances and whispering, shutting himself in his office in the way that is becoming almost habit. In theory he spends the morning engrossed in paperwork, but in truth he’s filling out the pages without even noticing what he’s writing. His hand moves across the page, but his eyes are constantly drawn to the empty corner of his desk.

His lunch break is spent in the telegram office. It’s the same woman as yesterday, but she seems adamant that she doesn’t recognise him. She tells him the same as yesterday; that the message was sent for the first and only time that morning by a black- haired woman in expensive clothes. Jack flips, shouting that what she tells him is impossible, because she’s dead, don’t they understand, she’s _dead _, and a man emerges from a back room to calm him down and escort him out. The door slams behind him, and he pretends not to see the expressions of fear and sympathy that follow him out. He doesn’t go back to the station.__

__

__The second telegram arrives that evening._ _

__Jack burns it._ _

__

__Jack awakens to a telegram._ _

__The message itself ends up in pieces, scattered haphazardly amongst the contents of his waste paper basket, but when the time printed on the page arrives Jack finds himself gripping the steering wheel of his dark blue police car, heading inexplicably for the accompanying location. He doesn’t quite know when logic abandoned him; all he knows is that the messages refuse to stop and that a small, completely illogical part of his mind tells him that maybe if he obeys, if he answers the telegram, then this nightmare repetition will finally cease._ _

__A plane is waiting when he pulls up, and for a long moment he wonders if he’s about to be sick. His legs are shaking as he gets out the car, as he crosses the field in a mess of longing and depression and numbness, and even as he does so he asks himself what he’s doing. He watches with a strange detachment as the figure jumps down from the plane and begins to run towards him, and he watches her approach with a growing sense of anger. She’s familiar, too familiar, and before he knows it _she’s _standing before him. She starts to speak, but he can’t wait, and he cuts her off as he gathers her in his arms. She’s a dream, or a hallucination, the product of a desperate, grief-stricken mind, but he doesn’t care because it feels so real. He can smell her perfume, feel her silken garments beneath his fingertips and the ghosting of her breath against his neck. He thinks he might be crying.___ _

____All too soon his hallucination is pulling away, turning from him, and he realises her father has called to her. She turns back to him, and there’s confusion in her eyes as she wipes away the dampness that has fallen on his cheeks. She rises on to her tiptoes, and Jack’s mind barely manages to process the fact that she’s placing a soft kiss to his lips before she’s gone, running back to her plane, her coat billowing behind her as she shouts at him to follow her. He’s still standing there when the sun sets, staring into the sky that swallowed the woman he could almost believe was real._ _ _ _

____ _ _

____The second telegram arrives that evening._ _ _ _

____The pain is just as bad as it was the first time, and Jack finds himself placing a call. Mac’s awful silence on the other end only adds to his confusion, so much so that when she finally speaks he accepts her offer, finding himself driving down unfamiliar roads to an unfamiliar house in an unfamiliar neighbourhood with nothing but hopes of an explanation._ _ _ _

____Too many drinks later the whole story spills out of him, a disjointed tale of identical messages and incompetent telegram operators and airfield hallucinations and how he thinks he might be going insane. Mac’s drunk enough to take him seriously, somehow, and she tells him tales of scientific impossibilities that are almost enough to convince him. He heads home in the early hours, far too drunk to be driving, and he falls asleep knowing that despite the impossibility of it all, if there’s a telegram waiting for him when he wakes he’ll be doing everything that he can to stop her plane taking off._ _ _ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you hadn't already, please take note of the warnings in the tags. Sorry.

Jack awakens to a telegram.

He doesn’t open it, he never does any more, but if asked he wouldn’t have even attempted to deny that it was the first thing his eyes sought as he entered the hallway each morning; the small, off-white envelope proof that he has not yet squandered his final chance. Proof, and hope. Hope that maybe today, maybe this time, despite weeks, months of consecutive failure, he can find a way to prevent Phryne Fisher from taking flight.

The time, carefully printed on the slip of folded paper, sealed in its envelope and yet read many a time over, approaches, as it always does, and as always it finds Jack driving carefully towards its accompanying location, pure habit and the badge in his pocket the only things keeping him to the speed limit. Outwardly, he’s calm, but behind the façade his mind is turning faster than the wheels of his blue police car, desperately searching for the words that will convince her to stay.

 

The second telegram arrives that evening.

This one, too, remains unopened, Jack long ago having lost the strength to read those words once again. It hardly matters, the message is etched into his brain, the words dancing through the darkness every time he can bear to close his eyes. The envelope, pushed under his locked door, remains abandoned on his floor. Jack knows, he so desperately hopes, that it won’t be there tomorrow.

Some nights he calls on Mac, drowning her sensibilities and scepticism in measure after measure of whiskey, safe in the knowledge that neither of them will feel the effects the next day, and he tells her everything. Sometimes, she even believes him. Tonight though, he doesn’t have the energy he knows he’ll expend trying to convince her, and so he heads home, opting for the safer option of hot cocoa and a well-worn paperback. For once it’s one of those rare nights when Jack manages to pretend, to ignore telegrams and planes and kisses than happen all too rarely and end all too soon, and he falls asleep with nothing on his mind but a fictional detective and his fictional case.

 

Jack awakens to a telegram.

Again, it remains unopened, and again he finds himself behind the wheel of his dark blue police car, following the route that has become all too familiar to him now. His heart still pounds in his chest as he sees the plane, and his throat still dries as he sees its pilot leap from her seat and begin to run, his own legs carrying him to meet her halfway before any conscious decision has even been made. They meet, and he’s already pulling her into his arms, needing, as always, to convince himself that she’s truly there.

There are days where she laughs at him, those where he treads more cautiously, interpreting his subtle pleading as yet another step in their slow waltz. There are others, days when he can’t hide the desperation in his eyes and in his voice, where her own voice softens, and her fingers gently brush away the tears that sometimes fall from beneath his closed eyelids. Those are the days she comes closest to sentimentality, foregoing implication-laden riddles for more direct reassurances, although never saying those exact words they’ve both been dancing around for so long.

Then there are the other days, days like this one, when in his urgency Jack crosses that invisible line drawn in their invisible sand, driving her away with his attempt to clip her wings. She storms back to her plane with an anger that stems from betrayal, Jack having sabotaged any inclination she might have had to finally admit what she’d tried for so long to deny. Jack watches her go, her plane disappearing into the sky, his heart breaking at yet another failure. She may have hated him, may have regretted every step of their slow, close dance, but he would never have regretted it had it caused her to stay.

 

The second telegram arrives that evening.

Jack hates himself, but there’s a small part of him that can’t help but be relieved. He doesn’t want to be alone, not tonight, not after harsh words and the cutting of ties that still hurt despite knowing he’ll be the only one to remember them in the morning. He heads to Mac’s, a bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand, the one that returns itself, refilled, to his cupboard each morning, knowing it’ll be enough to grant him entry. He forgets, sometimes, that this is only an old habit to one of them.

Tonight, despite their mutual intoxication, Mac doesn’t believe him, and Jack finds himself stumbling home feeling worse than when he arrived. His car is still parked outside the doctor’s residence, and for a moment he worries, yet can’t help but laugh out loud as he remembers his worry is unfounded. The police car will be waiting for him when he awakes, resetting itself in the same way the bottle currently lying discarded on Mac’s table will re-appear in his kitchen cupboard, the same way the small, off-white envelope currently crumpled in his pocket will be awaiting him by the telephone.

 

Jack awakens to a telegram.

This time, as the time carefully printed on the unopened message approaches, Jack finds himself not behind the wheel of his police car, driving the all too familiar route to the airfield, but instead sat at his kitchen table, hands clasped around a quickly cooling mug of once hot tea, his eyes staring unseeingly at the curving grain of the wooden table. He couldn’t have said how many days, weeks, months it had been since the first telegram, nor since he’d realised he’d been offered a second, third, fourth chance to save her. Not that anybody would have asked, but watches and calendars held little meaning when time itself seemed to be breaking all of its own rules.

Just this once, he allows himself to wonder. If he doesn’t go, if he allows himself this one day, just one day, to gather his thoughts, to make a plan, to not think of raven hair and blood red lips and the whirring of a plane’s propeller as it launches itself into the sky, will he still get another chance? He’s tired, so, so tired, drained with the effort of constant, repeated failure; of having to watch her fly away from him each and every time, knowing exactly how far she’ll make it before the edges of a storm dash the small plane from the sky, burying it and its passengers deep below the icy waves. He’d never thought himself a weak man, thought that if he could survive the war he could survive anything, but on days like this one he thinks he’d rather be back in the trenches.

It isn’t hope that drags him to his feet, it’s fear. Fear that if he remains, if he doesn’t try, he’ll be telling time that he’s given up, and tomorrow there won’t be a telegram waiting for him by the telephone when he awakens. A glance at his watch tells him he’s been sitting there too long, and he foregoes his coat as he races out the front door. He can’t help but think of Phryne as he drives, imagining her utter delight as he pushes the dark blue police car as fast as it will go, forcing all thoughts of speed limits to the back of his mind as he curses his own hesitation.

The brown grocer’s van seems to appear out of nowhere, emerging from a side street before Jack even has time to think about breaking. The crunching sound of the two vehicles colliding is all he can hear, and time seems to slow as Jack watches a spider web of cracks slowly spread across his windscreen. The cracked glass is getting closer, and Jack’s only just realised that it’s him that’s moving, the impact forcing him forwards, before his head is colliding with the steering wheel and suddenly all he knows is pain, pain that somehow increases as he’s thrown back again, leaving his hat behind as he slams into the headrest. He can hear groaning, and screaming, but as he turns his head to try and find the source he finds his vision fading, any visual clues that would tell him what had just happened nothing but coloured blurs. He blinks, trying to make things clear, but the pain that floods his entire body makes it impossible for him to keep his eyes open. Giving up, he lets the darkness claim him, comforted by the knowledge that he’ll get to try again tomorrow.

 

The second telegram arrives that evening.

It’s good news, but there’s no-one at home to receive it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phryne awakens to a telegram.

Her first instinct is that it’s from Jack, and she turns the off-white envelope over in her hands as she lies in the unfamiliar bed, listening to the sounds of an unfamiliar city drifting in through her open window. For a moment she allows herself to simply imagine, picturing what the message might say without making any move to open the envelope. She’s never been a patient person however, and it isn’t long before the envelope lies discarded beside her, her fingers carefully unfolding the accompanying message with anticipation.

Her father finds her there several hours later, still staring at the small piece of paper as if waiting for the words to rearrange themselves in front of her. His irritation at her tardiness is thrown out of his mind as she clutches him, and to his utter surprise she’s _weeping_ , sobbing into his chest as he hesitantly wraps her in his arms.

She snaps at him, afterwards, but for once he doesn’t rise to her challenge. He’ll happily take the blame, because it’s clear to everyone that if she isn’t blaming him, if she isn’t screaming at him for taking her away, the only person she’ll have left to blame is herself. Jack’s dead, crushed under a grocer’s van as he raced to the airfield, to her, and if Henry Fisher had any doubts of the depth and sincerity of his daughter’s feelings they’ve been swept away by her grief. He lets her scream, let’s her cry and curse and, eventually, sleep, and he’s horrifically reminded of a young girl desperately searching for her sister.

She’d survived that, just.

He doesn’t know how she’ll survive this.


End file.
